Complexities of the Ethical Dilemmas in Qualitative International Relations Research: Research Subjects, Ethical Codes, and Constructing Qualitative Rigor

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall, I find this article fascinating, and believe it could make a worthwhile contribution to ongoing debates regarding ethics in research. However, I do think there are some potential issues and several opportunities to improve the manuscript. 

First, in terms of issues, the author(s) choose to focus on qualitative research in international relations. The bulk (I might even estimate a vast majority) of international relations scholarship is quantitative in nature, and there are  ongoing debates about ethics in quantitative research. I think the author(s) would be well served in explaining and emphasizing how and why qualitative international relations scholarship requires different ethical standards.

Second, I find the section on rigor to be disconnected. The author(s) attempt to link ethics and rigor, but these attempts need to be significantly strengthened, or perhaps split into a separate paper. Again, I think ongoing debates about rigor in quantitative international relations scholarship would be useful citations and could help to strengthen the manuscript, if this section remains in the paper.

Third, I think the author(s) could strengthen the manuscript by providing a very detailed case or hypothetical. There are numerous short vignettes in the manuscript as it stands, but the author(s) could further strengthen the paper by providing a very detailed example of how ethical standards in international relations ethnography (as an example) should be different, or by more explicitly comparing necessary ethical standards across qualitative methods.

Finally, the author(s) need to take a more clear stand. Are they arguing in favor of removing informed constraint or not? What ethical standards should apply? Simply removing all procedural ethics checks seems like madness. While this manuscript as it currently stands explicates various issues with aspects of procedural ethics, it does not attempt to solve them. Critiques without solutions or without a firm stand do not make a sufficient contribution to the discourse.

Still, I recommend the author(s) be given an opportunity to continue after major revisions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment for my responses to the review report. Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This article could better situate research ethics in qualitative IR in the context of scholarship on ethics in IR fieldwork (Cronin-Furman; Janine Clark; are two examples). This would help the article in terms of one coherence and two engagement with research pratice in IR. 

The first is issue that needs to be addressed is coherence. The article starts by drawing on the development of ethics codes in research starting from the medical sciences. This is a bit unnecessary, given the IR focus and given the amount of scholarship on research ethics - for example feminist IR centers ethics & reflexivity in research (see for example Ackerly). As such, the article could be better served, and better centered, by starting by addressing how ethics has been approached in IR - from the positivist objectivist approaches which see ethics in the context of core standards for interacting with human subjects, and from more interpretive approaches that see ethics as a more all encompassing concern.

At this point, the article meanders between these approaches but does not explicitly define or address them, making some of the analysis - particularly in relation to vulernable research groups, and the lack of some of the above context makes it difficult to assess dilemmas presented. 

I would recommend starting from moving the discussion of IR from the back to the front - the address different approaches to ethics (reflexivist/interpretive and positivist), then examine research practice in this context. 

Finally, as noted above, this article would be improved if examples were discussed in the context of IR - for example, qualitative research practice drawn from major IR journals. There is some of this, but many examples cited arguable aren't examples from IR scholarship but rather other disciplines.

Overall, this article is does raise some important points, but as is it doesn't seem to speak to a wider IR audience, but this is something that could be addressed. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment for my response to the reviewer's comments. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made significant revisions in addressing my comments, and I recommend acceptance of the article as is. Even in disagreement (see their response to comment 3), they provide adequate reasoning for not incorporating my comment- which I frankly agree with, having read the memo. I believe the additions to the manuscript made in response to comment 4, in particular, have significantly strengthened the manuscript. I thank the authors for their clear, cordial, and concise engagement.